Dave Eggers, from an interview posted at www.armchairnews.com/freelance/eggers.html

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You actually asked me the question: "Are
you taking any steps to keep shit real?" I want you always to look back
on this time as being a time when those words came out of your mouth.

Now, there was a time when such a question
- albeit probably without the colloquial spin - would have originated from
my own brain. Since I was thirteen, sitting in my orange-carpeted bedroom
in ostensibly cutting-edge Lake Forest, Illinois, subscribing to the Village
Voice and reading the earliest issues of Spin, I thought I had my ear to
the railroad tracks of avant garde America. (Laurie Anderson, for example,
had grown up only miles away!) I was always monitoring, with the most sensitive
and well-calibrated apparatus, the degree of selloutitude exemplified by
any given artist - musical, visual, theatrical, whatever. I was vigilant
and merciless and knew it was my job to be so.

I bought R.E.M.'s first EP, Chronic Town,
when it came out and thought I had found God. I loved Murmur, Reckoning,
but then watched, with greater and greater dismay, as this obscure little
band's audience grew, grew beyond obsessed people like myself, grew to
encompass casual fans, people who had heard a song on the radio and picked
up Green and listened for the hits. Old people liked them, and stupid people,
and my moron neighbor who had sex with truck drivers. I wanted these phony
R.E.M.-lovers dead.

But it was the band's fault, too. They
played on Letterman. They switched record labels. Even their album covers
seemed progressively more commercial. And when everyone I knew began liking
them, I stopped. Had they changed, had their commitment to making art with
integrity changed? I didn't care, because for me, any sort of popularity
had an inverse relationship with what you term the keeping 'real' of 'shit.'
When the Smiths became slightly popular they were sellouts. Bob Dylan appeared
on MTV and of course was a sellout. Recently, just at dinner tonight, after
a huge, sold-out reading by David Sedaris and Sarah Vowell (both sellouts),
I was sitting next to an acquaintance, a very smart acquaintance married
to the singer-songwriter of a very well-known band. I mentioned that I
had seen the Flaming Lips the night before. She rolled her eyes. "Oh I
really liked them on 90210," she sneered, assuming that this would put
me and the band in our respective places.

However.

Was she aware that The Flaming Lips had
composed an album requiring the simultaneous playing of four separate discs,
on four separate CD players? Was she aware that the band had once, for
a show at Lincoln Center, handed out to audience members something like
100 portable tape players, with 100 different tapes, and had them all played
at the same time, creating a symphonic sort of effect, one which completely
devastated everyone in attendance? I went on and on to her about the band's
accomplishments, their experiments. Was she convinced that they were more
than their one appearance with Jason Priestly? She was.

Now, at that concert the night before,
Wayne Coyne, the lead singer, had himself addressed this issue, and to
great effect. After playing much of their new album, the band paused and
he spoke to the audience. I will paraphrase what he said:

"Hi. Well, some people get all bitter when
some song of theirs gets popular, and they refuse to play it. But we're
not like that. We're happy that people like this song. So here it goes."

Then they played the song. (You know the
song.) "She Don't Use Jelly" is the song, and it is a silly song, and it
was their most popular song. But to highlight their enthusiasm for playing
the song, the band released, from the stage and from the balconies, about
200 balloons. (Some of the balloons, it should be noted, were released
by two grown men in bunny suits.) Then while playing the song, Wayne sang
with a puppet on his hand, who also sang into the microphone. It was fun.
It was good.

But was it a sellout? Probably. By some
standards, yes. Can a good band play their hit song? Should we hate them
for this? Probably, probably. First 90210, now they go playing the song
every stupid night. Everyone knows that 90210 is not cutting edge, and
that a cutting edge alternarock band should not appear on such a show.
That rule is clearly stated in the obligatory engrained computer-chip sellout
manual that we were all given when we hit adolescence.

But this sellout manual serves only the
lazy and small. Those who bestow sellouthood upon their former heroes are
driven to do so by, first and foremost, the unshakable need to reduce.
The average one of us - a taker-in of various and constant media, is absolutely
overwhelmed - as he or she should be - with the sheer volume of artistic
output in every conceivable medium given to the world every day - it is
simply too much to begin to process or comprehend - and so we are forced
to try to sort, to reduce. We designate, we label, we diminish, we create
hierarchies and categories.

Through largely received wisdom, we rule
out Tom Waits's new album because it's the same old same old, and we save
$15. U2 has lost it, Radiohead is too popular. Country music is bad, Puff
Daddy is bad, the last Wallace book was bad because that one reviewer said
so. We decide that TV is bad unless it's the Sopranos. We liked Rick Moody
and Jonathan Lethem and Jeffrey Eugenides until they allowed their books
to become movies. And on and on. The point is that we do this and to a
certain extent we must do this. We must create categories, and to an extent,
hierarchies.

But you know what is easiest of all? When
we dismiss.

Oh how gloriously comforting, to be able
to write someone off. Thus, in the overcrowded pantheon of alternarock
bands, at a certain juncture, it became necessary for a certain brand of
person to write off The Flaming Lips, despite the fact that everyone knew
beyond a shadow of a doubt that their music was superb and groundbreaking
and real. We could write them off because they shared a few minutes with
Jason Priestley and that terrifying Tori Spelling person. Or we could write
them off because too many magazines have talked about them. Or because
it looked like the bassist was wearing too much gel in his hair.

One less thing to think about. Now, how
to kill off the rest of our heroes, to better make room for new ones?

We liked Guided by Voices until they let
Ric Ocasek produce their latest album, and everyone knows Ocasek is a sellout,
having written those mushy Cars songs in the late 80s, and then - gasp!
- produced Weezer's album, and of course Weezer's no good, because that
Sweater song was on the radio, right, and dorky teenage girls were singing
it and we cannot have that and so Weezer is bad and Ocasek is bad and Guided
by Voices are bad, even if Spike Jonze did direct that one Weezer video,
and we like Spike Jonze, don't we?

Oh. No. We don't. We don't like him anymore
because he's married to Sofia Coppola, and she is not cool. Not cool. So
bad in Godfather 3, such nepotism. So let's check off Spike Jonze - leaving
room in our brains forů who??

It's exhausting.

The only thing worse than this sort of
activity is when people, students and teachers alike, run around college
campuses calling each other racists and anti-Semites. It's born of boredom,
lassitude. Too cowardly to address problems of substance where such problems
actually are, we claw at those close to us. We point to our neighbor, in
the khakis and sweater, and cry foul. It's ridiculous. We find enemies
among our peers because we know them better, and their proximity and familiarity
means we don't have to get off the couch to dismantle them.

And now, I am also a sellout. Here are
my sins, many of which you may know about already:

First, I was a sellout because Might magazine
took ads.Then I was a sellout because our pages
were color, and not stapled together at the Kinko's.Then I was a sellout because I went to
work for Esquire.Now I'm a sellout because my book has
sold many copies.And because I have done many interviews.And because I have let people take my
picture.And because my goddamn picture has been
in just about every fucking magazine and newspaper printed in America.

And now, as far as McSweeney's is concerned,
The Advocate interviewer wants to know if we're losing also our edge, if
the magazine is selling out, hitting the mainstream, if we're still committed
to publishing unknowns, and pieces killed by other magazines.

And the fact is, I don't give a fuck. When
we did the last issue, this was my thought process: I saw a box. So I decided
we'd do a box. We were given stories by some of our favorite writers -
George Saunders, Rick Moody (who is uncool, uncool!), Haruki Murakami,
Lydia Davis, others - and so we published them. Did I wonder if people
would think we were selling out, that we were not fulfilling the mission
they had assumed we had committed ourselves to?

No. I did not. Nor will I ever. We just
don't care. We care about doing what we want to do creatively. We want
to be interested in it. We want it to challenge us. We want it to be difficult.
We want to reinvent the stupid thing every time. Would I ever think, before
I did something, of how those with sellout monitors would respond to this
or that move? I would not. The second I sense a thought like that trickling
into my brain, I will put my head under the tires of a bus.

You want to know how big a sellout I am?

A few months ago I wrote an article for
Time magazine and was paid $12,000 for it I am about to write something,
1,000 words, 3 pages or so, for something called Forbes ASAP, and for that
I will be paid $6,000 For two years, until five months ago, I was on the
payroll of ESPN magazine, as a consultant and sometime contributor. I was
paid handsomely for doing very little. Same with my stint at Esquire. One
year I spent there, with little to no duties. I wore khakis every day.
Another Might editor and I, for almost a year, contributed to Details magazine,
under pseudonyms, and were paid $2000 each for what never amounted to more
than 10 minutes work - honestly never more than that. People from Hollywood
want to make my book into a movie, and I am probably going to let them
do so, and they will likely pay me a great deal of money for the privilege.

Do I care about this money? I do. Will
I keep this money? Very little of it. Within the year I will have given
away almost a million dollars to about 100 charities and individuals, benefiting
everything from hospice care to an artist who makes sculptures from Burger
King bags. And the rest will be going into publishing books through McSweeney's.
Would I have been able to publish McSweeney's if I had not worked at Esquire?
Probably not. Where is the $6000 from Forbes going? To a guy named Joe
Polevy, who wants to write a book about the effects of radiator noise on
children in New England.

Now, what if I were keeping all the money?
What if I were buying property in St. Kitt's or blew it all on live-in
prostitutes? What if, for example, I was, a few nights ago, sitting at
a table in SoHo with a bunch of Hollywood slash celebrity acquaintances,
one of whom I went to high school with, and one of whom was Puff Daddy?
Would that make me a sellout? Would that mean I was a force of evil?

What if a few nights before that I was
at the home of Julian Schnabel, at a party featuring Al Pacino and Robert
DeNiro, and at which Schnabel said we should get together to talk about
him possibly directing my movie? And what if I said sure, let's?

Would all that make me a sellout? Would
I be uncool? Would it have been more cool to not go to this party, or to
not have written that book, or done that interview, or to have refused
millions from Hollywood?

The thing is, I really like saying yes.
I like new things, projects, plans, getting people together and doing something,
trying something, even when it's corny or stupid. I am not good at saying
no. And I do not get along with people who say no. When you die, and it
really could be this afternoon, under the same bus wheels I'll stick my
head if need be, you will not be happy about having said no. You will be
kicking your ass about all the no's you've said. No to that opportunity,
or no to that trip to Nova Scotia or no to that night out, or no to that
project or no to that person who wants to be naked with you but you worry
about what your friends will say.

No is for wimps. No is for pussies. No
is to live small and embittered, cherishing the opportunities you missed
because they might have sent the wrong message.

There is a point in one's life when one
cares about selling out and not selling out. One worries whether or not
wearing a certain shirt means that they are behind the curve or ahead of
it, or that having certain music in one's collection means that they are
impressive, or unimpressive.

Thankfully, for some, this all passes.
I am here to tell you that I have, a few years ago, found my way out of
that thicket of comparison and relentless suspicion and judgment. And it
is a nice feeling. Because, in the end, no one will ever give a shit who
has kept shit 'real' except the two or three people, sitting in their apartments,
bitter and self-devouring, who take it upon themselves to wonder about
such things. The keeping real of shit matters to some people, but it does
not matter to me. It's fashion, and I don't like fashion, because fashion
does not matter.

What matters is that you do good work.
What matters is that you produce things that are true and will stand. What
matters is that the Flaming Lips's new album is ravishing and I've listened
to it a thousand times already, sometimes for days on end, and it enriches
me and makes me want to save people. What matters is that it will stand
forever, long after any narrow-hearted curmudgeons have forgotten their
appearance on goddamn 90210. What matters is not the perception, nor the
fashion, not who's up and who's down, but what someone has done and if
they meant it. What matters is that you want to see and make and do, on
as grand a scale as you want, regardless of what the tiny voices of tiny
people say. Do not be critics, you people, I beg you. I was a critic and
I wish I could take it all back because it came from a smelly and ignorant
place in me, and spoke with a voice that was all rage and envy. Do not
dismiss a book until you have written one, and do not dismiss a movie until
you have made one, and do not dismiss a person until you have met them.
It is a fuckload of work to be open-minded and generous and understanding
and forgiving and accepting, but Christ, that is what matters. What matters
is saying yes.

I say yes, and Wayne Coyne says yes, and
if that makes us the enemy, then good, good, good. We are evil people because
we want to live and do things. We are on the wrong side because we should
be home, calculating which move would be the least damaging to our downtown
reputations. But I say yes because I am curious. I want to see things.
I say yes when my high school friend tells me to come out because he's
hanging with Puffy. A real story, that. I say yes when Hollywood says they'll
give me enough money to publish a hundred different books, or send twenty
kids through college. Saying no is so fucking boring.

And if anyone wants to hurt me for that,
or dismiss me for that, for saying yes, I say Oh do it, do it you motherfuckers,
finally, finally, finally.